Got this info about the seminar, led by MA graduates students.
Sadly I missed whole seminar.
-26th April, 2008, LOOKING FOR OBSERVATION
MA graduation seminar 2008.
With Ibon Aranberri, Markus Degerman, Élie During, Polly Gould, Ane Hjort Guttu, Luis Jacob, and Kurt Johannessen.
Both art and science involve moments of discovery, where perception leads to materialisation. This would imply that observation lies at the core of these practices. But what does it mean to observe?
Working as an artist or scientist also means adopting a position with regards to our surroundings: What do we make of what we perceive around us? What makes it worth exploring? How do we order, archive, and narrate what we observe in order to achieve a particular result? How much of our observation is already conditioned or steered by our pre-established means of ordering, archiving and narrating? And how do we respond to the narratives, categorisations and scenarios by which we are already surrounded?
Looking for Observation is a seminar organised by a group of MA students graduating from the Bergen National Academy of the Arts in conjunction with their exhibition Tomorrow’s Parties at Bergen Kunsthall. As the initiators and organisers of this event we share an interest in dealing with the questions of observing and collecting. Though we deal with these interests in disparate ways, the relation between science and emotions, an interest in performative work and forms of storytelling are recurring issues in our work, and provide the starting for this event.
We have invited five speakers and two performance artists in whose practices these issues resonate. In relation to questions around institutions, archives and modes of display, we have invited Markus Degerman, whose work involves 25th direct interventions in the aesthetics of museums, galleries and other discursive spaces. We found an interest in the ideology of images and strategies of rearranging and reinterpreting to be at the core of Ane Hjort Guttu’s artistic practice. Luis Jacob and Ibon Aranberri both called for our attention at last years’ documenta. Jacob’s photo collection Album III triggers networks of narratives through a playful use of visual associations. Aranberri’s installation work cites formal codes as a strategy to discuss ideological issues related to history and politics. Elie During has lately been focusing on the relations between observation and experimentation from a philosophical point of view. In their performances for Looking for Observation, Kurt Johannessen and Polly Gould will refer to forms of representation and narration from the realm of the natural sciences, and apply new narrative layers.
The chosen locations for this two-day event – Bergen’s Bryggens Museum of Cultural History, Museum of Natural History and Kunsthall – invite the speakers and the audience to interconnect the approaches to observation, archiving and narrating that have shaped each of these disciplinary contexts.
Looking for Observation is organised by:
Pedro Gómez-Egaña (www.pedrogomezegana.com), Toril Johannessen (www.toriljohannessen.no), Veronica Lindblad, Marte Røed, and Vilde Salhus Røed (www.vildesr.no).
Moderators:
Anke Bangma and Pedro Gómez-Egaña.
The organisers would like to thank:
Jeremy Welsh, Karen Kipphoff, Paula Crabtree, Per Kvist, Turid Sundfjord, Helene Petterson, Jacqueline Welsh, Mattias Arvastsson, Trond Mikalsen, Aleksander Andreassen, Cecilie Bjørgås Jordheim, and Morten Kvamme, as well as Bryggens Museum, Naturhistorisk Museum, Bergen Kunsthall and Landmark.
PROGRAMME
Friday 25th April
Bryggens Museum, Dreggsallmenningen 3
9.30-9.45
Introduction
9.45-10.45
Ane Hjort Guttu: How to Become a Non-Artist and other works
Ane Hjort Guttu will connect observation and categorisation to ideology. Her projects investigate and question representational strategies and power structures through analytical essays, image collections, staged photography, or formalist sculptures. She will speak about works that point at the inherent ideologies in such image genres as architecture photography, the portraiture of female artists, and printed matter from the era of social democracy. She will also present works in which she looks at the way objects or images with uncertain meanings may break down established categories and become metaphors for a certain freedom of mind.
Ane Hjort Guttu is an artist based in Oslo. Recent exhibitions include a solo show at Young Artists' Society UKS, Oslo (2007); and the group exhibitions Indifference and Engagement, Galleri Trafo, Asker (2007); Norwegian Sculpture Biennial, Vigelandsmuseet, Oslo (2006); Jump into Cold Water, Shedhalle, Zurich (2005); and Something out of Nothing, Fotogalleriet, Oslo (forthcoming in 2008).
10.45-11.45
Luis Jacob: Album
Luis Jacob will discuss ‘observation’ and ‘collecting’ through the example of his Album series. Album III is composed of hundreds of images culled from a variety of books, magazines, and other publications. These images are montaged together and hung sequentially in the gallery to form a kind of ‘image bank’. Through processes of association and visual puns, the images of this Album compose extended, even epic, narratives that weave one around the other in a process reminiscent of what Roger Buergel, director of documenta 12, called the “migration of form.”
Luis Jacob is an artist, writer, curator and activist based in Toronto. His recent solo exhibitions include Habitat, Kunstverein Hamburg (2008), Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto (2005-06); Just Do It!, Khyber Centre for the Arts, Halifax (2005); Flashlight, Toronto Sculpture Garden, Toronto (2005); Open Your Mouth and Your Mind Will Follow, travelling exhibition (2005). Recent group exhibitions include Martian Museum of Terrestrial Art, Barbican Art Gallery, London (2008); and documenta 12, Kassel (2007).
11.45-12.15
break
12.15-13.15
Élie During: The Experimental Gaze – Tactics of observation in science and art
When observation is conjugated with experimentation, the first issue that comes to mind is that of observation as construction: scientific experiments are controlled experiences; experimental observations yield constructed facts. But what about the unmediated act of observation in more ordinary circumstances? The writings of William James and Henri Bergson can help us bring to light the experimental nature of attention, considered as a tactic of observation common to the artist and the writer. Attention is not a passive registering of whatever meets the eye: it is a dynamic process, involving the crossing of thresholds and the interplay of different levels of consciousness. In this talk, a whole range of troubling forms of attentive observation (from entoptic vision to paramnesia or ‘déjà vu’) will serve as hints for understanding the projects of contemporary artists involved in creative practices of observation.
Élie During is a philosopher based in Paris. He is professor at the École nationale des beaux-arts in Lyon and is a member of the International Center for the Study of French Philosophy (CIEPFC) at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris. He has published several anthologies (on general philosophy and metaphysics) as well as a book on Henri Poincaré. He is also the editor of Matrix: machine philosophique, a speculative reading of The Matrix. His papers deal with topics such as electronic music, contemporary art and philosophy. His current research focuses on the interplay between art and science.
13.15-14.15
lunch break
14.15-15.30
Ibon Aranberri: Exercises on the North Side
Ibon Aranberri proposes alterations of the iconographical, historical and perceptual meaning of references that form a part of an intensely mediatised common imaginary. His work addresses local specificities and continuities defined by a hermetic nature – ruined forms, now inactive yet still present within collective memory. Through organisational forms such as sculptural diagrams, image-constructions and cartographies, Aranberri generates new responses to pre-established situations. His narrative mechanisms activate processes and conflicts that are always dependent upon the socio-political and cultural conditions of the given place and time, despite being related to more generic and universal imaginaries. Aranberri will speak about Exercises on the North Side, a continuing project in which he engages with the filmic representation of mountains and mountaineering, and their mythological and ideological significance.
Ibon Aranberri is an artist based in Bilbao. Recent solo exhibitions include Integration, Kunsthalle Basel (2007); Baltic Art Center, Visby (2006); The Cave, Iaspis, Stockholm (2005). Group exhibitions include documenta 12, Kassel (2007); Whenever It Starts It Is The Right Time, Frankfurter Kunstverein (2007); Phantom, Charlottenborg udstillingsbygning, Copenhagen (2006); Cork Caucus, National Sculpture Factory, Cork, Ireland (2005); Be what you want but stay where you are, Witte de With, Rotterdam (2005); Desacuerdos, Macba, Barcelona (2005); Die Regierung, Secession, Vienna (2005).
15.15-15.30
break
15.30-16.30
Markus Degerman: About exhibition design and aesthetics
Markus Degerman investigates what kind of narratives and social scenarios are written into spatial configurations and visual displays. His practice includes (re)designing exhibition settings and modifying environments in public space. His talk will look at exhibition design and the aesthetics of seminars. Partly under the influence of academia and art as research, the phenomena and terminology of the seminar, laboratory and archive have become common features of contemporary art. What value should we attach to these specific artistic forms, and what function could they have in a world in which everyday life itself has increasingly become aestheticised?
Markus Degerman is an artist based in Stockholm, and a member of the design collective Uglycute. His recent exhibitions include Undersöka Form, Nationalmuseum, Stockholm (2008); Home Cinema, Maribel López Gallery, Berlin (2008); Multiple Choices, Oslo Kunstforening (2008); Exteriors, CCA, Kiev (2007); Building Societies, Konsthall C, Stockholm (2007); Opacity, UKS, Oslo (2005); and Gelijk het leven is, S.M.A.K., Ghent (2003). He also made the exhibition design for the show The Cave by Ibon Aranberri, Iaspis, Stockholm (2005), and is the editor of Social Perspective on Art and Design (2006). www.markusdegerman.com
16.30-17.00
Conclusions
Saturday 26th April
Naturhistorisk Museum, Muséplass 3
11.30-12.15
Polly Gould: Utopia
A performance lecture, starting at Naturhistorisk Museum and ending at Bergen Kunsthall
The work of Polly Gould is concerned with our relationships as speaking subjects, exploring questions of voice, power and desire, presented in a live form as performance lectures or performance video works. Her recent work has been particularly concerned with the spatialisation of memory, landscape and mourning. For her performance in Bergen she will conduct an audio tour through the taxidermy display in Bergen’s Natural History Museum, giving a voice back to the stuffed animals and displayed objects, and a right to reply to their spectators, thus challenging the relations between observer and observed.
Polly Gould is an artist based in London. Her recent projects include Peninsular, ICIA, Bath (2008); In the Asparagus Bed (selected for the Jerwood Drawing Prize 2007); and The Alpine Fantasy of Victor B and Other Stories (collection of artists’ stories, 2006). Recent (performance)lectures include Libraries and Landscape, ICIA, Bath (2008); Death and Beyond, ASCA, Amsterdam (2007); and Objects and Narratives, Loughborough University (2007). She also works collaboratively as part of Eggebert-and-Gould on public art commissions and curatorial projects, such the touring exhibition Nature and Nation: Vaster than Empires (2002-03), and Topophobia: Landscape and Anxiety (forthcoming 2008). Gould lectures in Fine Art at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design and Wimbledon College of Art, London. www.pollygould.co.uk
12.15-13.45
Viewing of the MA exhibition Tomorrow’s Parties at Bergen Kunsthall
& lunch break
13.45-14.30
Kurt Johannessen: The Soap Bubble’s Vanishing Act
Performance at Bergen Kunsthall, Rasmus Meyers allé 5
Kurt Johannessen relates to scientific experiments and discoveries, quests for truth, as well as the unbelievable and inexplicable, often using pseudo-scientific formats and narratives in his work. From his text works, lectures and performances, he has developed a particular form of lecture-performance. The Soap Bubble’s Vanishing Act emerged from the book Other Discoveries (2007), where it appeared together with 110 other texts. In his performance-lecture, he will thoroughly scrutinize this text, to try to find out how such an occurrence can take place. Working methodologies, the cockroach’s point of view, the Phantom Blot and football are all relatively relevant for this investigation.
Kurt Johannessen is an artist based in Bergen. He recently presented his work at amongst others Kunstnernes Hus, (Oslo 2007); Bergen Art Museum (2007); Tromsø Society of Fine Art (2006) Akershus Art Center (2006); King St. Stephen Museum, Hungary (2006); Manchester Craft and Design Centre (2006); Fotograleriet, Oslo (2006); The National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design (Oslo 2005); and Le Lieu, Centre en Art Actuel, Québec (2005). www.zeth.no
Sadly I missed whole seminar.
-26th April, 2008, LOOKING FOR OBSERVATION
MA graduation seminar 2008.
With Ibon Aranberri, Markus Degerman, Élie During, Polly Gould, Ane Hjort Guttu, Luis Jacob, and Kurt Johannessen.
Both art and science involve moments of discovery, where perception leads to materialisation. This would imply that observation lies at the core of these practices. But what does it mean to observe?
Working as an artist or scientist also means adopting a position with regards to our surroundings: What do we make of what we perceive around us? What makes it worth exploring? How do we order, archive, and narrate what we observe in order to achieve a particular result? How much of our observation is already conditioned or steered by our pre-established means of ordering, archiving and narrating? And how do we respond to the narratives, categorisations and scenarios by which we are already surrounded?
Looking for Observation is a seminar organised by a group of MA students graduating from the Bergen National Academy of the Arts in conjunction with their exhibition Tomorrow’s Parties at Bergen Kunsthall. As the initiators and organisers of this event we share an interest in dealing with the questions of observing and collecting. Though we deal with these interests in disparate ways, the relation between science and emotions, an interest in performative work and forms of storytelling are recurring issues in our work, and provide the starting for this event.
We have invited five speakers and two performance artists in whose practices these issues resonate. In relation to questions around institutions, archives and modes of display, we have invited Markus Degerman, whose work involves 25th direct interventions in the aesthetics of museums, galleries and other discursive spaces. We found an interest in the ideology of images and strategies of rearranging and reinterpreting to be at the core of Ane Hjort Guttu’s artistic practice. Luis Jacob and Ibon Aranberri both called for our attention at last years’ documenta. Jacob’s photo collection Album III triggers networks of narratives through a playful use of visual associations. Aranberri’s installation work cites formal codes as a strategy to discuss ideological issues related to history and politics. Elie During has lately been focusing on the relations between observation and experimentation from a philosophical point of view. In their performances for Looking for Observation, Kurt Johannessen and Polly Gould will refer to forms of representation and narration from the realm of the natural sciences, and apply new narrative layers.
The chosen locations for this two-day event – Bergen’s Bryggens Museum of Cultural History, Museum of Natural History and Kunsthall – invite the speakers and the audience to interconnect the approaches to observation, archiving and narrating that have shaped each of these disciplinary contexts.
Looking for Observation is organised by:
Pedro Gómez-Egaña (www.pedrogomezegana.com), Toril Johannessen (www.toriljohannessen.no), Veronica Lindblad, Marte Røed, and Vilde Salhus Røed (www.vildesr.no).
Moderators:
Anke Bangma and Pedro Gómez-Egaña.
The organisers would like to thank:
Jeremy Welsh, Karen Kipphoff, Paula Crabtree, Per Kvist, Turid Sundfjord, Helene Petterson, Jacqueline Welsh, Mattias Arvastsson, Trond Mikalsen, Aleksander Andreassen, Cecilie Bjørgås Jordheim, and Morten Kvamme, as well as Bryggens Museum, Naturhistorisk Museum, Bergen Kunsthall and Landmark.
PROGRAMME
Friday 25th April
Bryggens Museum, Dreggsallmenningen 3
9.30-9.45
Introduction
9.45-10.45
Ane Hjort Guttu: How to Become a Non-Artist and other works
Ane Hjort Guttu will connect observation and categorisation to ideology. Her projects investigate and question representational strategies and power structures through analytical essays, image collections, staged photography, or formalist sculptures. She will speak about works that point at the inherent ideologies in such image genres as architecture photography, the portraiture of female artists, and printed matter from the era of social democracy. She will also present works in which she looks at the way objects or images with uncertain meanings may break down established categories and become metaphors for a certain freedom of mind.
Ane Hjort Guttu is an artist based in Oslo. Recent exhibitions include a solo show at Young Artists' Society UKS, Oslo (2007); and the group exhibitions Indifference and Engagement, Galleri Trafo, Asker (2007); Norwegian Sculpture Biennial, Vigelandsmuseet, Oslo (2006); Jump into Cold Water, Shedhalle, Zurich (2005); and Something out of Nothing, Fotogalleriet, Oslo (forthcoming in 2008).
10.45-11.45
Luis Jacob: Album
Luis Jacob will discuss ‘observation’ and ‘collecting’ through the example of his Album series. Album III is composed of hundreds of images culled from a variety of books, magazines, and other publications. These images are montaged together and hung sequentially in the gallery to form a kind of ‘image bank’. Through processes of association and visual puns, the images of this Album compose extended, even epic, narratives that weave one around the other in a process reminiscent of what Roger Buergel, director of documenta 12, called the “migration of form.”
Luis Jacob is an artist, writer, curator and activist based in Toronto. His recent solo exhibitions include Habitat, Kunstverein Hamburg (2008), Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto (2005-06); Just Do It!, Khyber Centre for the Arts, Halifax (2005); Flashlight, Toronto Sculpture Garden, Toronto (2005); Open Your Mouth and Your Mind Will Follow, travelling exhibition (2005). Recent group exhibitions include Martian Museum of Terrestrial Art, Barbican Art Gallery, London (2008); and documenta 12, Kassel (2007).
11.45-12.15
break
12.15-13.15
Élie During: The Experimental Gaze – Tactics of observation in science and art
When observation is conjugated with experimentation, the first issue that comes to mind is that of observation as construction: scientific experiments are controlled experiences; experimental observations yield constructed facts. But what about the unmediated act of observation in more ordinary circumstances? The writings of William James and Henri Bergson can help us bring to light the experimental nature of attention, considered as a tactic of observation common to the artist and the writer. Attention is not a passive registering of whatever meets the eye: it is a dynamic process, involving the crossing of thresholds and the interplay of different levels of consciousness. In this talk, a whole range of troubling forms of attentive observation (from entoptic vision to paramnesia or ‘déjà vu’) will serve as hints for understanding the projects of contemporary artists involved in creative practices of observation.
Élie During is a philosopher based in Paris. He is professor at the École nationale des beaux-arts in Lyon and is a member of the International Center for the Study of French Philosophy (CIEPFC) at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris. He has published several anthologies (on general philosophy and metaphysics) as well as a book on Henri Poincaré. He is also the editor of Matrix: machine philosophique, a speculative reading of The Matrix. His papers deal with topics such as electronic music, contemporary art and philosophy. His current research focuses on the interplay between art and science.
13.15-14.15
lunch break
14.15-15.30
Ibon Aranberri: Exercises on the North Side
Ibon Aranberri proposes alterations of the iconographical, historical and perceptual meaning of references that form a part of an intensely mediatised common imaginary. His work addresses local specificities and continuities defined by a hermetic nature – ruined forms, now inactive yet still present within collective memory. Through organisational forms such as sculptural diagrams, image-constructions and cartographies, Aranberri generates new responses to pre-established situations. His narrative mechanisms activate processes and conflicts that are always dependent upon the socio-political and cultural conditions of the given place and time, despite being related to more generic and universal imaginaries. Aranberri will speak about Exercises on the North Side, a continuing project in which he engages with the filmic representation of mountains and mountaineering, and their mythological and ideological significance.
Ibon Aranberri is an artist based in Bilbao. Recent solo exhibitions include Integration, Kunsthalle Basel (2007); Baltic Art Center, Visby (2006); The Cave, Iaspis, Stockholm (2005). Group exhibitions include documenta 12, Kassel (2007); Whenever It Starts It Is The Right Time, Frankfurter Kunstverein (2007); Phantom, Charlottenborg udstillingsbygning, Copenhagen (2006); Cork Caucus, National Sculpture Factory, Cork, Ireland (2005); Be what you want but stay where you are, Witte de With, Rotterdam (2005); Desacuerdos, Macba, Barcelona (2005); Die Regierung, Secession, Vienna (2005).
15.15-15.30
break
15.30-16.30
Markus Degerman: About exhibition design and aesthetics
Markus Degerman investigates what kind of narratives and social scenarios are written into spatial configurations and visual displays. His practice includes (re)designing exhibition settings and modifying environments in public space. His talk will look at exhibition design and the aesthetics of seminars. Partly under the influence of academia and art as research, the phenomena and terminology of the seminar, laboratory and archive have become common features of contemporary art. What value should we attach to these specific artistic forms, and what function could they have in a world in which everyday life itself has increasingly become aestheticised?
Markus Degerman is an artist based in Stockholm, and a member of the design collective Uglycute. His recent exhibitions include Undersöka Form, Nationalmuseum, Stockholm (2008); Home Cinema, Maribel López Gallery, Berlin (2008); Multiple Choices, Oslo Kunstforening (2008); Exteriors, CCA, Kiev (2007); Building Societies, Konsthall C, Stockholm (2007); Opacity, UKS, Oslo (2005); and Gelijk het leven is, S.M.A.K., Ghent (2003). He also made the exhibition design for the show The Cave by Ibon Aranberri, Iaspis, Stockholm (2005), and is the editor of Social Perspective on Art and Design (2006). www.markusdegerman.com
16.30-17.00
Conclusions
Saturday 26th April
Naturhistorisk Museum, Muséplass 3
11.30-12.15
Polly Gould: Utopia
A performance lecture, starting at Naturhistorisk Museum and ending at Bergen Kunsthall
The work of Polly Gould is concerned with our relationships as speaking subjects, exploring questions of voice, power and desire, presented in a live form as performance lectures or performance video works. Her recent work has been particularly concerned with the spatialisation of memory, landscape and mourning. For her performance in Bergen she will conduct an audio tour through the taxidermy display in Bergen’s Natural History Museum, giving a voice back to the stuffed animals and displayed objects, and a right to reply to their spectators, thus challenging the relations between observer and observed.
Polly Gould is an artist based in London. Her recent projects include Peninsular, ICIA, Bath (2008); In the Asparagus Bed (selected for the Jerwood Drawing Prize 2007); and The Alpine Fantasy of Victor B and Other Stories (collection of artists’ stories, 2006). Recent (performance)lectures include Libraries and Landscape, ICIA, Bath (2008); Death and Beyond, ASCA, Amsterdam (2007); and Objects and Narratives, Loughborough University (2007). She also works collaboratively as part of Eggebert-and-Gould on public art commissions and curatorial projects, such the touring exhibition Nature and Nation: Vaster than Empires (2002-03), and Topophobia: Landscape and Anxiety (forthcoming 2008). Gould lectures in Fine Art at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design and Wimbledon College of Art, London. www.pollygould.co.uk
12.15-13.45
Viewing of the MA exhibition Tomorrow’s Parties at Bergen Kunsthall
& lunch break
13.45-14.30
Kurt Johannessen: The Soap Bubble’s Vanishing Act
Performance at Bergen Kunsthall, Rasmus Meyers allé 5
Kurt Johannessen relates to scientific experiments and discoveries, quests for truth, as well as the unbelievable and inexplicable, often using pseudo-scientific formats and narratives in his work. From his text works, lectures and performances, he has developed a particular form of lecture-performance. The Soap Bubble’s Vanishing Act emerged from the book Other Discoveries (2007), where it appeared together with 110 other texts. In his performance-lecture, he will thoroughly scrutinize this text, to try to find out how such an occurrence can take place. Working methodologies, the cockroach’s point of view, the Phantom Blot and football are all relatively relevant for this investigation.
Kurt Johannessen is an artist based in Bergen. He recently presented his work at amongst others Kunstnernes Hus, (Oslo 2007); Bergen Art Museum (2007); Tromsø Society of Fine Art (2006) Akershus Art Center (2006); King St. Stephen Museum, Hungary (2006); Manchester Craft and Design Centre (2006); Fotograleriet, Oslo (2006); The National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design (Oslo 2005); and Le Lieu, Centre en Art Actuel, Québec (2005). www.zeth.no
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